An indictment was handed up by a Harvard University grand jury against the Yale Precision Marching Band for crimes against Crimson sensibilities.  Well, not exactly an indictment, but the closest thing one gets in the world of Ivy League marching bands.  From the New Haven Register (via Norm Pattis’ eagle eye):

A little good fun between hated rivals apparently went too far last weekend, leading to the suspension of the Yale Precision Marching Band.

Adding insult to the injury of Harvard’s 10-0 defeat Saturday in The Game, which was held in Boston, Yale University’s director of bands, Thomas C. Duffy, suspended the marching band Monday because of a “completely inappropriate and highly offensive” prop used during the halftime show, according to the Yale Daily News.

The newspaper quoted an e-mail Duffy sent to band members: “I was personally embarrassed and offended, and professionally compromised. I am suspending the Yale Precision Marching Band from all activities and performances, effective as of this very moment.”

Now this requires a little a lot of background to understand.  You see, the name, Yale Precision Marching Band, is itself part of the issue.  The band is anything but precise.

The name Yale Precision Marching Band is itself somewhat of a joke. The band calls itself a “scatter band,” one of 12 in the country, according to its Web site. It does not, as most marching bands do, “spend their time on field spelling their name in script or making a swirly line formation while playing the complete works of Andrew Lloyd Webber.”

“We perform halftime shows composed of comedy segments, during which we spell witty things on the field and play really cool rock music.” it says.

While plebeian school bands march about in very specific steps, and spell out fascinating things like “Go Team” and “Defense”, bands like Yale’s (following the lead of their student athletes, another oxymoron) challenge wit by using their performance to take on controversial issues or just impugn the dignity of their opponents’ clothing.  One could see it as elitist.  I think it’s very funny.  No one, but no one, takes it very seriously. 

Except, apparently, Yale band director Thomas Duffy.  One would think he would know better.  This is the sort of thing one expects from the Yale Precision Marching Band:

The antics of the band are legendary, and the band is happy to brag about past sketches: Saddam Hussein as a Yale professor, digging up missing Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa on the 30-yard line, and “the unforgettable George W. Bush sketch, which involved a line of white-shirted bandies and the playing of Eric Clapton’s ‘Cocaine.’”

Then there was 1978, when band members marched with their pants around their ankles.

Come on.  That’s pretty darned funny.  You can’t take this seriously.  You just can’t.  So what did the band do to make its own director “personally embarrassed and offended, and professionally compromised,” unbelievably strong language under any circumstance? Well, it’s hard to say, exactly.

It was unclear what element of the band’s prank crossed the line, but The Daily News said the band used as a prop “a graffiti-covered replica of the Berlin Wall, (which) was the centerpiece of a halftime show that portrayed Harvard as a Communist empire.”

The Daily News quoted an e-mail by Rosa Li, the band’s drum major, who said the wall contained “some genuinely inappropriate things on it (i.e. more inappropriate than ‘sucks’) that I would have made y’all paint over, had I seen it.

“That being said, I don’t think much, if any of it, would have been visible or noticed from the stands,” the e-mail said.

Did they call John Harvard a commie for letting new admits in without tuition?  Seriously, what could have been done to evoke this degree of outrage?

The worst part about this debacle is that in the battle of wits, Harvard whupped Yale’s butt.

Harvard Band Director Thomas Everett said he didn’t notice the Yale halftime show because he was preparing for his band’s show, in which it portrayed a trip back in time to “uncreate Yale so Yale had never existed,” Everett said, and sought to “topple the Bulldog King.”

Hah!  Everett nailed them with that response.  He didn’t even notice. There could no accusation more damning, no verdict more clear.

The Yale Precision Marching Band, for better or worse, is an effort at wit and Ivy League hi-jinx.  Granted, what passes for humor may not always meet expectations.  But for crying out loud, it’s essentially impossible for anyone to be offended by anything this band can do.  If anything, the worst thing it could do is be boring.  And fortunately for all of us, boring is not a crime.  Duffy, get over it.